


Cryptid Pro Quo

by MadameReveuse



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Clairvoyance, Cryptozoology, Gen, Whimsical, and the perks thereof, don't you think, it should really be called Cryptoanthropology since mothman is a sentient being, unimportant minor character let's call him uuhhh Dave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 09:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15992069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameReveuse/pseuds/MadameReveuse
Summary: The fact that even cryptids have bills to pay is yet another condemnation of late-stage capitalism.





	Cryptid Pro Quo

**Author's Note:**

> Just a whimsical little story I made up when I should have been focusing on my term paper. Indrid strangely inspires me. Just the concept of "mothman lives in a trailer now" is so... well, you can do things with it!!
> 
> If he turns out to be evil I'll riot. Seriously Griffin can't do this to me

The annoying thing about premonitions is that they never concern anything _important_. Oh, sure, the Kennedy assassination, Indrid’s had that in his head for months before it happened. But there had been no vision warning him that the heat would fail in his Winnebago.

It’s still freezing out, but most of the snow has turned to mud, so, in order to not disturb Dave, the guy who fixes the utilities in the RV park, Indrid takes himself outside today. He sits in an uncomfortable plastic chair right in front of the trailer and drapes yet another blanket over his knees. His sketchbook lies open in his lap, but he’s almost too wrapped up in his many layers of cloth to draw. What can he say? He likes being toasty. Moth to light? No, moth to _heat_.

Eventually he does begin sketching. Sending his mind on the many-branched path of what the future might hold is so easy by now, after decades and decades of practice, it’s second nature to him. It’s almost harder not to do it. Over in town, the Pine Guard is still hunting the latest whatever-it-is, so Indrid thinks it prudent to keep at it.

_What happens next, what happens next…?_

“All fixed up here, Mr. Cold,” says Dave from inside.  

“Thank you, David,” Indrid mutters, still bent over his drawing. He doesn’t like being brought out of the zone like that. He’s so rusty at contact with humans. He knows there’s Sylphs up at the Lodge who live among these people, blurring the lines between _them_ and _us_ , but Indrid has never quite been able to see humans as anything but other-than-me.

“All these space heaters are wildly unsafe,” Dave says, standing in the door now, and Indrid can barely restrain himself from chiming in and saying it with him. On Sylvain, that was considered normal for him to do.

“It’ll be fine,” he says and goes back to sketching. Next to the plastic chair there’s a plastic table, and that’s where he puts all the finished sketches for the time being.

“I’m just saying.”

“It will be _fine_ ,” Indrid insists. For a moment he wants to snap at the kid, I’ll be fine because I’m the seer, premonitions would _probably_ warn me of any fatal _accidents_ concerning _myself_ , and that would have been that on Sylvain, but humans just don’t _listen_.

“I mean, okay,” Dave says and scratches his head. “Far be it from me to rat out my paying customers for safety violations.”

Indrid sighs. He doesn’t need clairvoyance to know that the ‘paying customer’ part is going to become a problem in the future. His near-constant visions, along with his complete lack of any identity or recorded past here on Earth, make him unfit for most kinds of work, and the visions don’t really guide him in the direction of this week’s lottery numbers or anything of the sort. One time they showed him how he might win a lifetime supply of eggnog – it’s a good thing he likes the stuff so much – but that’s been it for him really. He’s made money in various other little ways, but never a fortune. Only ever enough to scrape by.

The Lodge sustains itself fairly well, or so he’s heard, by renting out rooms to ordinary non-Sylph tourists. The Lodge is nice and warm, and there’s others of his kind there… but no. No, he won’t, he can’t.

“Cool drawings,” Dave says, interrupting Indrid’s thoughts once more. The kid is peering over his shoulder at the sketches. “You sell those?”

“Sell them?” Indrid asks. It’s rare that a human manages to surprise him. “I don’t. I wouldn’t know who’d buy them.” It’s the truth. To him, the drawings are a crutch, a visual aid that helps parse his premonitions. But he supposes they’re also objectively nice sketches. Huh. He’s never considered drawing for profit.

“What do you mean? They’re good. All of Kepler’s landmarks. You just draw these from memory?” Dave doesn’t give Indrid time to get a word in as he picks up a sketch, examines it up close and says, “Tourists might dig this. Maybe some of the locals too. Hell, I’d take one off your hands. Nice thing to hang up in the living room.”

Indrid huffs a small, wry laugh. His little portents of disaster. A nice thing to hang up in the living room.

“I mean it,” Dave says. He grabs another drawing, somewhat rudely, Indrid thinks. It’s of the Cryptonomica. “Hey, Ned might hang this up in there. Some of the others too, if you, like, drew some Sasquatches in there.”

_Barclay,_ Indrid thinks. He sighs again. “I don’t think I’ll do Sasquatches.” At least he damn well hopes so. 

“Heard the Bigfoot craze is winding down anyway,” Dave says blithely. “Ned’s planning another exhibit soon, I don’t know if you’re into the cryptid stuff? Not that I believe in it, but… might be interesting. He’s doing another big one, another… cryptid household name, you know. Kind of a stretch, though, right, all these famous cryptids hiding out in Kepler?”

“Kind of a stretch,” Indrid echoes.

“I’m more of a Blair Witch fan. If she came out to Kepler, that’d be a hoot. But this new exhibit? I don’t know, man. I mean, what does Mothman even do?”

Indrid looks down at himself. There’s an eggnog stain on his shirt. “This,” he mutters.

“What was that?” Dave asks.

Indrid waves him off. Cryptid household name, huh? An idea begins to dawn.

 

* * *

 

It’s a slow day for the Cryptonomica, but with that last hectic, stressful hunt concluded, Ned is almost glad to have a day of doing crosswords behind the counter. But there hasn’t been a customer in here all day and it gets boring. Kirby, who is in the back room typing up another issue of the Lamplighter, isn’t the most thrilling conversation partner.

The door chimes and in walks Indrid Cold, throwing up a peace sign, a horrid puce sweater hanging off his skinny frame and offering dubious protection against the freezing climes outside. The man (the moth, the legend) rubs his bony hands together, apparently glad to get out of the cold and into the stuffy warmth the Cryptonomica offers at this time of the year.

“Hi, Ned,” he says. “Nice exhibit you’ll have going here.”

Ned blinks through the sudden images of his life flashing before his eyes. Good god, he’s only just – and only sort of - convinced Barclay to let him do what he does here. And Barclay’s a nice guy who, Ned knows, would never do anything above rolling his eyes at the general fact that the Cryptonomica exists. Ned knows Barclay. Ned doesn’t know Indrid. Is he going to have another querulous cryptid to wrangle?

“Did you actually foresee…”

“…what kind of exhibit I’m going to put up?” They finish the sentence together. Indrid flashes that smile that’s gotten him the moniker The Grinning Man.

“No,” he says. “Of course not. The guy who works at the RV park told me.”

Ned wills a jovial smile of his own onto his face. “Ah, young David? One of my most frequent customers.”

“Not that he believes in this stuff,” they say together, and share a little laugh about it. It’s hard to see what with the glasses, but Indrid seems to be looking around the shop – pardon, the museum – somewhat curiously. Ned is now aware that some of the people he’s seen visiting here and giggling at the exhibits were folks from the Amnesty Lodge having a laugh at misinterpretations of themselves, but he’s never seen Indrid in here. In fact, neither he nor Duck – they’ve had that conversation – remember seeing Indrid anywhere around town, which is odd, considering he’s been around here for… how long? And Kepler’s small. And everyone has to get groceries, right?

“Well, what can I do for you today?” Ned asks. “It’s not another… hrm… you know?” He pats the spot on his jacket on the inside of which his Pine Guard patch is hidden.

“Oh, by no means!” Indrid exclaims. “This is a more… personal little errand. You see…” He tugs on his sweater, suddenly looking almost a bit abashed. “You see, I did have a premonition that in a week, Dave's employer is going to send me the bill for fixing my heat. I’m somewhat strapped for cash at the moment and… to be frank, I’m already in debt.”

Ned nods, genuinely sympathetic. Cryptids, they’re just like you and me. “Ain’t that just the way.”

“I’m here to offer you something. A little quid pro quo.” Indrid leans in, resting his skinny arms on the counter. “Being, as I am… the Mothman… has put a happy buck or two into my pocket on occasion, so I thought that you might… as a sort of connoisseur of cryptids…”

The way he says _connoisseur_ makes it sound suspiciously like he really means _fetishist_. It’s not even true, Ned’s been a staunch sceptic before Amnesty Lodge, he just happens to have inherited this tourist trap. He wonders if he’s about to pay the Mothman for sex. He’s about to suggest the shower as an appropriate venue because, bigshot cryptid or no, this guy smells like very old nog, when Indrid raises his hands and grins even wider.

“No, gosh, no,” he says, laughing, “I wasn’t about to suggest anything that… hands-on. But say…” He runs his fingers through his greasy hair. “How do you feel about a photoshoot?”

Ned’s eyes widen as he realizes what Indrid means. “You mean… with you? Without your disguise on?”

“Precisely. What say you, hmm? You, me, the woods, some blurry pictures?” He says it like it’s an exotic perversion and Ned can see dollar signs in his red, red glasses. The last even halfway credible Mothman sighting was ages ago, understandable if Indrid has been squatting in a trailer crying into his gross, stale eggnog about the Silver Bridge since 1967. New, fresh, never-seen-before pics of the guy himself? He can make a killing with this.

He’s certainly bound to attract attention. More tourists in Kepler. More customers for the Cryptonomica.

More of a hassle for Amnesty Lodge.

“This won’t… cause any trouble for you, will it?” Ned asks, leaning conspiratorially towards Indrid as well.

The seer waves a dismissive hand. “I’ll deal with that when and if it happens.”

“Break that bridge when we get to it, huh?”

For a moment, the patented Indrid Cold Smile flickers. “Please don’t.”

_It’s been fifty goddamn years,_ Ned wants to say. Instead he clears his throat. “Didn’t mean anything by it,” he says and extends a hand. “Well, my friend, it’ll be a pleasure doing business with you.”

They shake on it. “Do we head right out?” Ned asks. “Kirby can watch the shop – ah, the museum for me.”

Indrid shakes his head. “We have to do it in the evening. I’ve got a track record of being nocturnal, and I don’t want to be giving anyone any new ideas.”

“Tonight then,” Ned says. “And I’ll give you… twenty dollars per pic?”

Indrid rears back as if he’s been slapped. “Excuse you? I’m the _moth_ man. I’m worth easily triple that.”

“We can figure it out in post,” Ned amends. Twenty bucks _is_ probably pushing it. He’s looking forward to haggling with someone who can predict what you’re going to go for.

It’s a challenge. Ned Chicane loves a challenge.

“Oh, one more condition,” Indrid says, raising a finger.

“Do tell?”

“You _cannot_ flick my antennae. You will want to once you see them, but… we’re not quite there yet.”

Ned grins and nods. “Can we bring Aubrey?” he asks. “She wants to see those wings very, very badly.” He owes Aubrey fucking... that at least.

Indrid cocks his head in deliberation. “Fine,” he agrees, “but she can’t flick me either.”


End file.
